Neglect of road safety spending 'costs lives'

Thousands of people are needlessly dying on British roads because the government fails to invest in basic road safety measures, new research suggests today.

While the government has promised that no expense will be spared to make railways safer following the Paddington train crash, the treasury has told ministers there will be little extra cash available for road safety measures - even though 37 people have died in rail crashes in the past three years, compared with more than 10,000 in road accidents.

In a report published today, the parliamentary advisory council on transport safety (Pacts) claims that road deaths and injuries are costing the nation 20 times more than the government is spending to avert road crashes.

The lobby group claims that the government's figures show the estimated costs of death and injury on the roads at £10.9bn a year. Yet the combined government spending on police enforcement, safety engineering, driver licensing and education total only £470m, according to the analysis by Pacts.

Pacts criticised the disparity between spending on measures such as traffic calming and improved traffic enforcement and the promise last year by the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, that "money is no object" on rail safety. It predicted that the government would spend up to £1bn on a train protection system which would have prevented the Paddington rail disaster - the equivalent of millions of pounds for every human life saved.

Rob Gifford of Pacts said: "Someone needs to do some hard thinking and ask why we are prepared to invest so heavily in rail safety and so little in road safety which offers much better value for money per life saved."

Although Britain's general road safety record compares well with other industrial nations, with 3,500 deaths every year, Britain has one of the worst child road safety records in Europe. The government is due to publish its road safety strategy later this month.

Kevin Delaney, spokesman for the RAC Foundation, said: "The trouble is that we have a rail crash and 20 or 30 people are killed, whereas there may be 10 road deaths a day but they don't happen in the same place at the same time and they happen for a variety of reasons which, more often than not, are related to human error.

"We clearly would like the government to spend more on road safety but it must be in a targeted way. Tens of millions of pounds have already been wasted on road safety measures which are not appropriate to specific areas."

A department of transport spokesman said: "The UK has the best record on road safety among the major industrialised countries but the government is not complacent. There is still a lot more to be done."

Ministers will be challenged on the figures at a BBC-sponsored debate tonight where they will also be asked to justify the move announced last week by police chiefs to allow drivers to break speed limits.

New guidelines from the Association of Chief Police Officers say drivers will not be booked unless travelling at more than 35mph in a 30mph zone. This contradicts the government's advertising campaigns warning that driving at 35 mph doubles the risk of killing a child in any collision.

The road safety debate will be broadcast tonight on Newsnight on BBC2 at 10.30pm.